Gary Megson happy to trade in the good life for West Brom boss Tony Pulis

Less than two weeks later, he’s scoffing Strepsils in his first round of interviews to deal with a bad throat that is sore from shouting instructions on the training ground.

Megson freely admits that, for the past few years, he’s been living a life of luxury – golfing and holidaying all around the world with his wife.

But despite the damage returning to the game has already done to his body, he’s beaming from ear to ear as he shares jokes with reporters.

He enjoys being back in football, and he enjoys being back at the Albion, where he has been appointed Tony Pulis’s assistant head coach following Dave Kemp's retirement.

“I was down at Heathrow when I spoke to Tony on the phone,” he revealed. “We were going to Corsica. I told my wife what had happened and that went down like the Bismarck, as you can imagine.

“She’s used to five holidays a year! I’ve joined here and told her ‘we’ll have to cancel that, cancel that, and cancel that’.”

Megson is loved in these parts for turning a sinking ship around in Division One before taking the Baggies up to the Premier League on two separate occasions.

But his last job in football was at Sheffield Wednesday, who sacked him in February 2012 when they were third in League One.

“The first year I wasn’t working I was offered two opportunities, I didn’t take them because I was on gardening leave, which is something I think should be abolished,” said Megson.

“After that finished I was trying to get back into work and applying for jobs, and I’m seeing people get the jobs who I didn’t think were as qualified as myself – but you think there must be a reason.

“After that, you’re banging your head against the brick wall so I thought stuff it. I’ve got a nice life, I don’t need to do it, I want to, but I don’t need to.

“In the last two or three years I’ve got used to travelling around the world, golfing, and poodling about.”

But when Pulis rang up following the retirement of his long-term assistant Kemp, it was an opportunity Megson could not resist.

“I would have done this for some of the really huge football clubs in the Premier League but I wouldn’t have done it for a similar sized club with somebody that I didn’t know,” said Megson.

“I’m here because of Tony and hopefully for Tony. I think if there had been another manager here, I wouldn’t have been here.”

Megson has answered Pulis’s rallying call because the pair go way back. Gary’s father Don was manager of Bristol Rovers when Pulis was an apprentice there and they grew up together as teenagers.

“I was 15 and me dad used to take me down in the holidays and what not, chuck me in amongst them,” revealed Megson. “We’ve known each other for that length of time.

“We’re not bosom buddies in terms of we’re always constantly on the phone and all that, because when you go into management you don’t have the time, you’re doing your own jobs. But we’ve taken teams against each other since, and we think we’ve got very similar ideals.

“I’m not saying we play exactly the same way or see things exactly the same way – we don’t – but we do believe in fitness and organisation, honest players, and trying to get the best out of the players we’ve got.”

Like many, Megson started his managerial career as an assistant. In his final season as a player he was also John Deehan’s No.2 at Norwich, but he admits that back in the mid-1990s he wasn’t always willing to carry out his boss’s demands.

“I didn’t think I was particularly good at it,” he said. “John would say something and I’d have a different opinion and would stick to it rather than saying ‘well if that’s what John wants, let’s get behind the manager’. I need to try to adapt to that.”

Older and wiser now, the 58-year-old knows the role of an assistant is to be supportive without being submissive, helpful without dissenting.

“I see my role as like a caddie for a golfer,” he said. “You can tell what I’ve been doing the last five years!

“The caddie might say something but ultimately the manager decides what he wants to do. He will pick the team, and the way we play.”

When he was a manager, Megson had a reputation for being a formidable character in the dressing room, just like Pulis. So who will be playing the good cop out of the pair?

“Neither of us!” laughed Megson. “No, in all seriousness neither of us are bad cops. There is a perception in football, not just with Tony and myself.

“I was managing at Sheffield Wednesday and you would see descriptions of yourself and I would think ‘I’m not like that’.

“Most of the time I’m messing about and having a good giggle. When it comes to work time and things that are important to the football club, then I’m serious.

“But you can’t go through your life being like that. People that have seen me – and Tony – we are not like that all the time. It is just when it’s work.”

It’s been half a decade since Megson has been at the coalface, but he’s not concerned by his spell on the sidelines.

“You pick it up pretty quickly again,” he said. “Tony said some will see that as a negative whereas others won’t.

“I haven’t worked in football for the last five years but the previous 37 I did do without a break or anything.

“There will be a lot of clubs in the Premier League playing with three defenders at the back this season. I was doing that 20 years ago. But I wasn’t the first.

“Some people think, well that’s the way forward because Chelsea have just won the league doing it.

“But you have to have the players to do it. There’s nothing particularly new on the field.

“I’m enjoying it. I’m not finding it difficult. I like being out on the training ground with the players, having a laugh and a joke. They are a good set.

"It just takes a little bit of getting used to the new role.”